


A Strong Fragile House, or, Three Homecomings

by alasse



Category: A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 08:40:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13050462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alasse/pseuds/alasse
Summary: Three moments and three homes, in Jude and Willem's life together.





	A Strong Fragile House, or, Three Homecomings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fearlessfan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fearlessfan/gifts).



> For [fearlessfan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fearlessfan/pseuds/fearlessfan) \- Happy Yuletide! I was so glad to be matched with you, because my feelings and experience with this wonderful book were incredibly similar – I could not stop reading for an entire day until I finished, and then I went back to re-read so many moments, particularly those with Jude and Willem. I really, really hope you enjoy this, and that you have a lovely holiday season.

**hood hall**

After Jude made it to college, it took a while for the fear of being entirely out of his depth – of being a complete impostor, really - to diminish into manageable levels. 

Jude had imagined a lot of things, when he was working with Ana on his applications. His lack of exposure to movies, to television, to any of the usual points of commonality for boys his age, made walking into his dorm room a truly alien experience. At most, what he’d dared imagine was a door that locked, a room that was warm, a bed he could call his own and be certain – for at least as long as a semester lasted – that he’d keep. In his deepest, darkest of hearts – in that heart of hearts where the creature inside him dwelled, where his soft underbelly remained, where wishes and dreams lay dormant, expectant, stillborn – he hoped for more than safety. He hoped for belonging.

Walking into the room alone, Jude regretted the decision not to ask Leslie to come with him in lieu of Ana, but he was also glad he’d refrained, because he wasn’t sure he’d survive the lingering ghost of her here. He examined the two standard beds, the desks made from sturdy if fairly ugly pine wood, the carpet that had been tread and retread, cleaned to distraction to accommodate class after class of freshmen who were herded into these particular dorms each year. He tested the lock – not particularly hard to lock-pick, but at least a lock, at least a _door_ \- and walked the perimeter of the room once, twice, three times, slowly, his bad leg dragging ever so slightly. 

Then Malcolm walked into the room, and Jude felt like he’d never catch up; immediately berated himself for daring to hope, for even daring to _think_ that he’d ever belong. The feeling persisted despite Malcolm’s absent-minded kindness and politeness, despite the fact that people mostly exclaimed over Jude’s age - “Sixteen! You must be so smart!” – rather than his threadbare clothes or slight limp. He kept expecting to be hit with some sort of “Gotcha!” at any minute for at least two months of his first semester. 

Ultimately, though, people were so eager to share themselves, their stories, their opinions, that Jude’s attentive silence was welcomed with pleasure – people so loved being listened to. By the time his friendship with Malcolm, JB, and Willem began consolidating and his silence was taken notice of, Jude felt a little less adrift, and abler to skillfully deflect or share just enough (“Car accident”, “Orphan”) that further questions were, if not entirely avoided, at least postponed. Willem often helped – interrupting JB when he became particularly incisive, calmly sharing his own lack of understanding of many of the references JB and Malcolm shared because he’d grown up in a farm, working and taking care of Hemming with little time for anything else. Jude wasn’t sure if Willem helped him deflect the inquisitiveness of their friends consciously or not, and sometimes felt ashamed, but most of the time he felt an almost feral thankfulness. 

About a month after the night when he’d finally told them about his legs, a heavy snow-storm blew into town, stranding Malcolm and JB and many more of their classmates in the city and leaving Jude and Willem practically alone in the dorm. The still and quiet made them feel almost like explorers or pioneers – it was unclear when the roads would be completely cleared and classes were suspended until further notice – and after sleeping in to a degree that felt, still, utterly luxurious to Jude, they finally felt hungry enough to figure out if the closest dining hall was open. Another luxury, never taken for granted, not after months: it was, and Jude could eat as much he needed, as much as he wanted.

“So, what should we do with all the free time, Judy?” Willem asked, after the first quiet ten minutes of inhaling coffee, hash-browns and scrambled eggs.

Something inside Jude – the creature inside him, his own rebellious heart – was instantly, incandescently grateful for the ease of that _we_ , and it took him a moment to answer. “Study? I have a couple of essays I could start working on…”

Willem, who wasn’t exactly the most diligent student except when it came to drama and English Lit, immediately shook his head. “Snow day, Jude! Considering this is the first snow day I’ve had where I don’t have to figure out whether the cows are all accounted for and warm enough or if the fences are holding up, I am declaring that we should do this properly. No work, no school, just…” he trailed off, running out of steam. “Uh. How _do_ proper snow days go?”

Jude and Willem looked at each other for a moment, stumped, and then, giddily, inexplicably, started laughing at the same time. What might have been awkward with Malcolm, or a space for obliviously snotty reminiscence with JB, coupled with barely concealed horror at their sheer otherness (“Honestly, a snow day is weird for you? Were you raised in some sort of alien, Amish, anti-leisure time colony in the Midwest that we’ve never heard of?”), with Willem was a point of shared ignorance, and it didn’t matter that Jude’s ignorance was so much darker than Willem’s – the creature inside him stirred, briefly – what truly mattered was the warm complicity of its acknowledgement.

Eventually, after the laughter died down, Willem said, “Let’s go back to the dorm and figure it out. We’re smart, Jude – well, you are, anyway – we can do this.”

Jude rolled his eyes. “You’re just as smart, Willem.” 

It was just a different kind of smart. Jude would give back speaking German and Latin, he’d even give up some of his mathematics, if he could figure out how to move with the ease Willem moved in the world, his straightforward calm, his confidence.

Willem didn’t bother answering – he simply walked to grab a few bananas and a couple of muffins – and gestured for Jude to follow him. After a bracing walk back to their dorm and divesting of the many layers they’d put on for the trip, Willem paced back and forth while Jude sat and discreetly massaged his legs, because the cold made them stiffer than usual.

“Okay, I think I have it,” Willem eventually said, nodding to himself and taking out his phone. “Let me just check with Malcolm if we can use his computer.”

Evidently receiving a positive response, Willem turned on Malcolm’s computer and started clicking away. Malcolm was casual with his belongings in a way that Jude could hardly understand, because it wasn’t anything like the deliberate, if often dishonest, divestment from the material of the brothers, but rather a bone-deep and never challenged certainty that where there was one thing there would always be more, whether computers or cellphones or sweaters. 

After about ten minutes, he turned to Jude, quietly triumphant, and announced, “Jude, you and I are going to put our feet up, relax, and catch up with every damn movie we can manage that JB and Malcolm and everyone else keep harping about, because I’m sick and tired of explaining why I haven’t watched any of them yet. What do you think?”

Jude smiled, helplessly. It was so perfect and so wasteful – lying down watching movie after movie instead of working, instead of studying, instead of anything else – and so quietly accepting of the fact that Jude had never really explained _why_ he’d never watched the damn movies, no ranch or sick brother or anything other than “it’s complicated”, that he felt like hugging Willem, like holding onto him and never letting go. 

Willem smiled back. “Perfect. So – I suggest we start with ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’, because it seems topical, and then maybe work our way through the rest of the allegedly over-hyped, over-white, over-straight John Hughes’ stuff that JB hates to love, and if we end up feel up for it, apparently there’s even a crappy newer film called ‘Snow Day’ that could cap off the whole thing.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jude said, and it truly, truly did. 

After they went into the deserted common-room, Willem prepared a sort of nest for them, ensuring Jude would have a small footstool to stretch out his legs in comfort, and enough blankets to drown them, and they settled in. 

There were many things before those couple of days – moments, conversations, shared looks – that made Jude trust Willem over every other one of his friends, and many things after that built upon that trust. But he’d always treasure the hours upon hours they spent together on the common-room couch and later on Willem’s bed, watching movie after movie and eating whatever they felt like, because for the first time in his sixteen, almost seventeen years, Jude felt, if only for a brief moment, that he was part of something normal, a time-honored tradition, that he _belonged_. 

 

**lispenard street**

“How was the play tonight?” Jude asked.

“It was good, I think – I almost missed one of the marks, but it actually turned into a nice bit of improvisation that the director said he might want to incorporate, anyway, so it went well,” Willem replied.

“I’m sorry I missed it,” Jude said.

Willem grinned. “Really, Judy – you’ve seen almost as many of my plays as I have. I’ll forgive you missing this one just this once.”

Jude blushed slightly, but didn’t protest. He really had seen every play Willem had been in, multiple times, and hadn’t felt a single second of it wasted. 

“How was your trial, today? Did it go like you wanted?” Willem asked. 

“Yes, I think so,” Jude replied. “The judge seemed convinced, in any event, and the defense didn’t really go for what I considered the strongest argument.”

“I bet the defense never even thought of it,” Willem said. “So, have you been thinking about the offer Rosen Pritchard made?”

“More and more every day, honestly. I love working for the Attorney-General’s Office, but the offer is very, very tempting. I think Harold would hate it, though.”

“Listen, Judy – the important here is that _you_ don’t hate it,” Willem said, putting his hand over Jude’s for a moment. “And if this is a good offer, one that gives you the money you should be earning for that big brain of yours and challenges you, then that’s all that matters.”

“Thank you, Willem,” Jude said, allowing himself the comfort of Willem’s hand over his for a moment, before taking it away under the guise of taking a piece of bread for his pasta. 

They did this, almost every day that they could: de-constructing their days, running through their obstacles and losses, their triumphs and achievements. They’d done it since college, really, but the habit had never broken and Jude hoped it never did. He hadn’t gotten used to the fact that someone actually _cared_ about the minutiae of his life: he’d felt that Anna was a fluke, but Willem had come along and cared so much that Harold and Julia had been possible, after him.

“Now – are you ready to do some revising?” Jude asked.

Willem groaned, but obligingly took out his script and a pen to takes note with. He’d booked a play dramatizing the _Avena_ trial, where Mexico had sued the U.S. before the International Court of Justice due to breaches of due process and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations for nearly fifty of its nationals who had been sentenced to the death penalty. The play focused on one of the convicted men and two of the American lawyers involved in the trial – one on the side of the U.S., one on the side of Mexico – and it was a fascinating reflection on the nature of law and justice, because of course that the man had been convicted for murder, but the issue was _how_ he’d been convicted. Willem had made Jude promise to coach him in the legalese if he got it, and the lessons had begun over dinner whenever they could have it together after Jude got out of work and Willem out of the play he was currently acting in. 

“I’m not sure I got things too clear last time, go through it with me again. In international law, when there is a crime, there are three forms of reparation, right?” Willem asked. 

Jude shook his head. “No, not exactly – you need to be careful with the language. For the type of reparation we’re discussing, under general international law, we’re not talking about crimes, exactly, but rather breaches of international obligations of States. And when there’s a breach, there are indeed three forms of reparation. Crimes – international crimes, really – are a more specialized branch of international law, governed by its own more specific rules.”

Willem sighed. “I’m never going to get this. I don’t know why I said yes to this play.”

“Of course you’ll get it, Willem, and you’ll be amazing. This is a great play, you know it is,” Jude said. 

Willem nodded. “I know. I know it’s great. I just want to do it justice."

“You will. Listen – once you have the terminology down, the whole thing will start seeming very logical to you, I promise,” Jude said.

Willem looked at him doubtfully.

“I mean it. Think about reparations, for example – never mind the distinction between crimes and breaches just now. Under general international law, if a State commits an international wrong, a duty of reparation immediately arises, alright? And ideally, reparation would always mean trying to make it as if the wrong itself had never happened – it would mean truly _undoing_ the wrong,” Jude explained. “But of course, we know there are some things that can’t ever be undone – death, a catastrophic oil-spill, State-sponsored genocide – and so the three forms of reparation exist, which go in order, depending on just how much can be undone: restitution, compensation, and satisfaction.”

“Alright. So, restitution is the best possible one?”

“Sure. Restitution – known as _restitutio in integrum_ \- implies that the State must re-establish the situation which existed before the wrongful act was committed, as long as that is not materially impossible. In other words, it implies essentially wiping out the wrong from the world. But if that is not possible – because you can’t undo the bombing of an oil-tanker, for example, or the deaths of nationals of a State – you move on to compensation, which, as the name implies, means the compensation of financially assessable damage.”

“Wouldn’t most things be covered by restitution or compensation, then? Why would you need a third option?” 

Jude smiled slightly, because of course Willem imagined – even with the hardships he’d experienced growing up, even with the pain caused by Hemming’s death – that all wrongs could be erased or compensated. But as Jude well knew by now, there were wrongs so severe and yet so immaterial that they escaped any logic of money, so profound they could never be taken back. 

“Well, there are things that can’t be taken back and can’t really be financially measured – for example, the violation of a State’s sovereignty,” he eventually replied. “In the first case ever tried by the International Court of Justice, for example, Albania did not warn British ships going through the Corfu channel that the channel was mined, and the ships were blown up, so the Court determined that Albania owed Britain compensation – the cost of the ships, so on and so forth. But after the incident, Britain had entered the channel without permission from Albania and dragged the mines, which was a violation of Albania’s sovereignty. It wasn’t something that could be taken back, because it had happened, period. But it also wasn’t something that Albania could be financially paid for – how much is sovereignty worth? And so the Court used satisfaction: an acknowledgement of the breach that couldn’t be made good by restitution or compensation.”

“I see the logic, I think,” Willem said. “But it’s rather cold, isn’t it? To think that if something is severe enough that it can’t be taken back or paid, just acknowledging that it happened is enough to make it better?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jude said. “I think never admitting that something was wrong can ultimately be worse than pretending it was fine but throwing money at it.”

They were quiet for a moment, perhaps both of them thinking of JB, who had eventually given up _Jude with Cigarette_ and the paycheck that came with it, but had probably never really understood or acknowledged how wrong he’d been to paint it and show it in the first place.

“Yeah,” Willem said quietly. “I think you’re right.”

“Anyway – shall we keep going?” 

Willem looked around at the restaurant – they’d both finished their dinner and were only really dithering – and shook his head. “No, let’s go back home, maybe keep going there. Do you feel up for a walk?”

Jude knew what Willem meant – his legs, his strength – but replied, “Sure, it’s a nice night. Not too cold.”

They paid the check, and started walking towards Lispenard street, blending into the New York masses. Nothing they hadn’t done hundreds of times before, since they moved in together, and nothing they wouldn’t do again, but it felt special that night, somehow, unique.

In Jude’s mind, in his memories, Lispenard street would always hold the last of his great hopes – of getting better, of forever living in something like the charmed circle of effortless friendship of his twenties – and also some of his greater realizations. 

Not disappointments, exactly, although there were many of them, like the endless evening and night when he could simply not make it up the stairs and Andy confirmed, at last, without doubt, that “better” was not really a thing that Jude would ever be, not in the all-encompassing _restitutio in integrum_ way he hoped he’d one day achieve. Or JB’s painting, which changed everything between them and for Jude himself, no matter how much he wished he could change it back and also wished he couldn’t, because Willem staying by his side through it all had meant more than he could truly understand or verbalize, in any of the languages he spoke. 

Perhaps more than anything, Lispenard had been a dialing-back into something more manageable of expectations that had grown in him, of ideas of deserving reparation and atonement from life, ideas he’d absorbed unconsciously and almost unwillingly, after Ana and during college, through meeting Leslie, because the narrative was there, and so perfect, after all. Orphan boy goes through hell and makes it out, and the world ensures he is made anew. But of course, nothing is truly ever made anew, not after it has been broken like Jude was. 

But he became a great lawyer, and he could always afford the rent, and he could always afford food. And some days, his legs would let him walk all the way from work to whatever theater Willem was working in, and they would have dinner, and walk together back home. And on those days, Jude felt like there was nothing wrong with taking the arm that Willem always unconsciously offered because his legs were not hurting and thus there was no capitulation involved, no acknowledgement that he _needed_ to hold on to Willem to walk, but just that he enjoyed being close to his friend, when they made the turn off of Church and into Lispenard street and they could see their squat, ugly building approaching, a place with two locks and doors and a space all of their own… it felt like reparation enough.

 

**greene street/lantern house**

The _kjötsúpa_ was almost ready, according to the recipe, but Jude had never made it before so he couldn’t be sure. Of course, he’d prepared broth and stock for Willem for years now – even before he’d officially moved into Greene street – but the Icelandic lamb soup was a new experiment, meant to celebrate Jude’s relatively recent acquired ease with his prosthetic legs. 

“What do you think? Does it look good?” he asked Willem, who was hovering nearby, eating hunks of cured cheese that Asian Henry Young had sent them from Spain. 

“It looks good and it smells great, Jude,” Willem said.

“But Icelandic good?” 

Willem laughed. “I hate to disappoint you, Judy, but my parents weren’t ever exactly the traditional meal sort of people – we ate boiled potatoes, boiled peas, steak when the paycheck came in, chicken when it didn’t.”

Jude shrugged, smiling. “Well. Perhaps your genes will come through and help us identify if I made the damn thing alright.”

Willem laughed again, and leaned over to peck him on the lips. “I’m certain the damn thing will be delicious. Lamb, rice, potatoes, turnips, carrots and onions: what could go wrong?”

Jude rolled his eyes. “You worked at Ortolan for long enough, you know all the ways it could.”

“Too true.”

“So your parents never really did anything traditional? No Danish Christmas dishes, Icelandic New Years?” Jude asked, softly stirring the soup.

“No, not really,” Willem replied. “We hardly had time, honestly – between working at the farm and Hemming, the days were about waking up early, working, going to school or working, and going to sleep. We spoke Danish and Icelandic a lot, but that was as traditional as we got.”

Jude hummed, letting Willem know he was listening, that he wanted to know more. He’d always loved it when Willem told him about his childhood – he hoarded the stories, the moments, the details, even as he knew how stingy and slow he’d been with sharing his own, and how painful it had been for the both of them when he finally had.

“You know, thinking back on it, I think that by the time I was old enough to remember, whatever warmth they had, whatever tradition they might have shared or effort they might have made to make the house we lived in a true home, it had been spent with Britte and Aksel dying, with helping Hemming through the day,” Willem continued, absentmindedly fiddling with his hands. “Like maybe they’d jinxed themselves, thinking they’d come to the US and make a new life, like the one in the movies or the books, and their foolish pride ended up taking three of their four children. And so by the time I was old enough, they stuck to working and getting through the day and not much more.”

“Home is a funny thing, isn’t it?” Jude said. “The sense of it, everything it’s meant to imply and mean – so many people assume we must all come from something like it, and understand it, and yet… it’s such a lucky, strange thing, to have one.” 

He reached out, and took one of Willem’s fiddling hands with his own, and they looked at each other across the kitchen counter, knowing what each other was feeling right then, without having to say anything else.

They’d had different living spaces and houses between them since Hood Hall: Lispenard, Truro and Cambridge, Greene street, the London flat, Lantern House, but ultimately, it was Willem who was Jude’s home. 

And on days like these – when he could stand by the stove for two or three straight hours and cook something delicious which would make Willem smile, when the weather was pleasantly warm and their ridiculous and non-Malcolm approved flowers were blooming by the barn, when they had dinner and talked long into the night and kissed for a long time before bed, feeling no guilt because nothing more than kissing was happening – on days like these, Jude could let himself believe that he, too, was Willem’s home.

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by e.e. cummings’ [“my love is a building”](https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1622/my-love-is-building-a-building/), which feels so much about Willem and Jude (with bonus Malcolm thrown in because architecture). My ever-lasting thanks to B and M, for their keen eyes and support in looking this over – any remaining mistakes are my own.


End file.
